What are bon mots?

The literal translation of the French expression is "good words." But its true meaning goes beyond that. The expression means clever sayings, witticisms or quips.

Dropping French idioms into writing can sometimes be an annoying author's way of elevating himself, hoping to give the impression of worldliness or superior knowledge. But we'll use one here because it fits nicely in the menu above and because good words are good things, non?

This page includes some quotations and pithy sayings that perhaps reveal something meaningful about writing and writers. It will be updated from time to time.

They say ...

"Any reviewer who expressed rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." - Kurt Vonnegut

"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." - Frank Zappa

"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning." - George Orwell

"Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a computer and open up a vein." -Red Smith

"Revise a lot. You can always make it funnier." - columnist Dave Barry

"I write to find out what I'm writing, and once I get the sense of that, the hard work begins. It's like driving a car at night, when you can't see beyondthe headlights but somehow you get through the night." - E.L. Doctorow

"I don't know. I haven't written about it yet," - Saul Bellow when asked how he felt about winning the Nobel Prize.

"Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do about it." - Maxwell Perkins

" 'Vomit drafting,' is a method of organizing in which a writer types two screenfuls without worrying about sentences or sense, then prints it, underlines important things, and rearranges them into an outline. Then the writer kills the two screenfuls." - Don Fry in The Coaches Corner

"Good writing moves between the abstract and the concrete. Form is power. Revision goes on until death. And the older you get, the longer your belt and your sentences. Fight both tendencies." - Carolyn Matalene, University of South Carolina

"Unless you care whether anyone understands or believes what you want to say, you have no reason to care how you say it." - Unknown

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policeman or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing to say." - Kurt Vonnegut

"I have faith in myself. I'm either going to be a good writer or a poor fool." - Theodore Rothke, written as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

"Reader n. 1. archaic One who reads. 2. a sports fan." - From "The Devil's Stylebook" by John Osburn

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Samuel Johnson